Frisia Coast Trail.com

Haubargs. Cathedral-like farmsteads with hipped roofs soaring up to twenty meters high, icons of the Eiderstedt peninsula in the region of Nordfriesland. These monumental farms embody the peak of the friesische Großhäuser building tradition—yet also its end. This tradition, characteristic of the marshlands along the southern North Sea coast from Amsterdam to Husum, flourished from the mid-sixteenth to the nineteenth century. Haubargs, with the wealth they signified, so stirre

On the west bank of the mighty River Rhine, halfway between the cities of Koblenz and Mainz, lies the town of Sankt Goar. Named after Saint Goar of Aquitaine, a hermit who retreated here in the sixth century. Diagonally across the river stands the famous and mystical Lorelei Rock: steep and over 130 meters high. A whisper rock where many skippers and ships were wrecked. It is here where the River Rhine reaches its greatest depth of 27 meters, including treacherous rapids and

Let’s go to the omega. To the end of the Frisia Coast Trail . To Ribe in southern Jutland, Denmark. The oldest town in Scandinavia. A town located on the banks of the Ribe Å. A modest river that flows out into the Wadden Sea stoically slow, opposite the islands of Fanø and Mandø. Ribe started as a seasonal marketplace. Year-round settlement began around the year 700. Everything in peaceful times yet. Only with the raid on the island of Lindisfarne in Northumberland in 793 did

If you want to track down who killed the whale, the Frisia Coast Trail region is the place to start. Stop people on the streets along this southern North Sea littoral and ask whether they know anything, and you will likely hear: “I hear nothing, I see nothing, I know nothing.” Politicians and officials—say, in The Hague—will lament that they have no recollection of the affair. Better call them all Ishmael. In this blog post, we set out the unvarnished truth: how the peoples l

New York City, the Capital of the World. They call it a lot of things: Gotham, the Big Apple, the Empire City, Modern Gomorrah, even Baghdad-on-the-Subway. And of course, Times Square proudly calls itself the Center of the Universe—although the true center of the world is the village of Aegum. And in the middle of all this noise, lights, and skyscraper swagger, portraits of two quiet men from seventeenth-century Friesland—villagers from Peperga and Koudum—hang proudly in two

The earliest evidence of Frisian merchants—or kāpmon in the Old Frisian language—engaging in the slave trade dates back to the first half of the seventh century. No less an authority than the Venerable Bede, the Father of English history, recorded this criminal activity. He described a merchant operating in the markets of London who also dealt in slaves. As Fleming (2010) puts it: “Frisian slavers in hopes of swapping luxury goods for a little human flesh.” In this blog post,

Is the seaport Maasvlakte the gateway to north-western Europe? No? How about Europoort? Still no? What about the Botlek port area? Or the town of Vlaardingen? No again? Surely it must be the city of Rotterdam then! Wait—neither? Alright, last guess: since you guys only talk and brag about Frisia, could it be the town of Vreeswijk, the so-called ‘Frisian wic’? Sorry to disappoint the reader. None of these options is correct. The town in question is Dorestad—sometimes, and mor

In this blog post, we will argue that the Frisian lands might just as well be called the United Frisian Emirates. Granted, there are a few superficial differences with the modern United Arab Emirates. The Emiratis have camels and goats; the Frisians have cows and sheep. Their climate is hot and dry; the Frisians’ is wet and cold—for now. With global warming, palm trees may soon line the long dykes of the Wadden Sea and turn its barrier islands into Maldivian-style retreats. A

It was not the city of Parisius ('Paris'). Nor that of Londinium ('London'). Believe it or not, the early-medieval center for expensive cloth and chic clothing in the northwest of Europe was the muddy Wadden Sea coast. Here the highly sought-after pallia Fresonica ('Frisian cloth') was fabricated and distributed to the wider world. It possessed a quality good enough for red capes of handsome superheroes like Superman and Thor, and for the heklu blá ('blue capes') which Od